


born with the weakness to fall (born with the strength to rise)

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BAMF Laura Barton, BAMF Maria Hill, Female Friendship, How we got from before SHIELD to now, Maria and Laura are forever SHIELD BFFs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 10:37:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12886077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: Maria is fresh out of college, twenty-one and bright-eyed with the world at her fingertips, sharp and ready for action; there are no specks of grey in her dark hair that have been hidden by dye jobs, her suit is crisp and clean, and her mind bubbles with anticipation of all that she can accomplish.Maria is fresh out of college, twenty-one and bright-eyed with the world at her fingertips, sharp and ready for action, when she meets Laura at SHIELD orientation.Laura is two years older and two years wiser; the military man’s daughter arrives at SHIELD with a smile hidden behind a steel wall of emotion as she prepares to make her mark in a world full of powerful men. She walks in holding an oversized cup of coffee, sits down in a chair, and takes out a notebook. Alexander Pierce introduces himself and then talks about the greater good and serving a nation, about fame and fortune and good will. Laura looks up over her glasses and locks eyes with Maria across the room, and says the same thing at the same time while saying nothing at all.This is bullshit.





	born with the weakness to fall (born with the strength to rise)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is was shamelessly born out of [this particular photo from the Infinity War Vanity Fair cover shoot, and this subsequent post about Laura and Maria being BFFs.](http://wayward-dragons.tumblr.com/post/167985017822/can-we-please-talk-about-the-possibility-of-laura) I have a penchant for not being able to turn down female friendship stories when they get into my brain.
> 
> Title from Rupi Kaur.
> 
> _"If you were born with the weakness to fall you were born with the strength to rise."_

Maria is fresh out of college, twenty-one and bright-eyed with the world at her fingertips, sharp and ready for action; there are no specks of grey in her dark hair that have been hidden by dye jobs, her suit is crisp and clean, and her mind bubbles with anticipation of all that she can accomplish.

Maria is fresh out of college, twenty-one and bright-eyed with the world at her fingertips, sharp and ready for action, when she meets Laura at SHIELD orientation.

Laura is two years older and two years wiser; the military man’s daughter arrives at SHIELD with a smile hidden behind a steel wall of emotion as she prepares to make her mark in a world full of powerful men. She walks in holding an oversized cup of coffee, sits down in a chair, and takes out a notebook. Alexander Pierce introduces himself and then talks about the greater good and serving a nation, about fame and fortune and good will. Laura looks up over her glasses and locks eyes with Maria across the room, and says the same thing at the same time while saying nothing at all. 

_This is bullshit._

After the meeting is over and as the recruits are milling around Pierce like he’s the second coming of some grand messiah, Laura makes a beeline for Maria and the food table.

“Maria, right? Maria Hill?”

“Yes?” Maria looks confused. “Do I know you?”

“You served in the Marine Corps,” Laura says, reaching for a donut. “My father knew your name. He said you might be joining SHIELD my same year.” 

“Your father’s apparently right,” Maria says with a smile. “I guess men can be right about things, sometimes.” 

“Sometimes,” Laura agrees, sharing her grin. The donut she’s eating is glazed, and her fingers are sticky when she shakes her hand. 

“SHIELD doesn’t get a lot of women joining its ranks, despite what the statistics say,” Maria tells her as they seek out a corner far away from everyone else. “At least, not when it comes to active duty. Most of them end up in accounting, or they leave after a few years for the usual stuff -- marriage, babies. None of that ever appealed to me, though. I was always better with a toy sword than I was with a baby bottle.” 

Maria has a keen eye and a whip-smart stare that Laura knows even in that first meeting will become a trademark of her personality. So Laura’s not surprised when she asks her, “why SHIELD?”

Laura becomes pensive. “Because I was tired of being the smart unassuming girl, and it seemed like the right thing to do with my life,” she answers finally. “I want to change the world. Don’t you want to do something to change the world?”

“I’ve seen the world, and I don’t think it’s that easy to change,” Maria responds. “Especially if you’re a girl.”

“Women can rise up just as well as men can,” Laura says, undeterred by Maria’s pessimism. “I like finding challenges. If being a girl in a world of men is a challenge, I don’t mind taking it on. I’m sure people have endured worse.”

“Of course they have,” Maria agrees with a nod. “There are challenges in everything. You just have to figure out which ones are worth taking the risk on.” 

Laura thinks Maria is probably right, but she gets why Maria would think the way she does. Maria is military-tactical, and she has sharp edges that Laura thinks might only come off during after-hour beers or rom-coms. Maria has always been forced to err on the side of being cautious about rising up in a man’s world. Maria knows how to take shit, but it doesn’t mean she’s going to sit there and let herself take it.

Maria, fresh out of college, meets Laura, two years older, and they immediately bond over martinis, hot peppers, and a shared contempt for authority.

 

***

 

(Laura is ten and she is bright and pretty and perfect, and her mother warns her that she should guard herself because men will come after her whether she likes it or not, and she can’t be fooled by promises of sweet talking and compliments.

Maria is ten and she is bright and pretty and perfect, and her mother has died in childbirth. Her father decides quality time with his daughter will include abusing her, and Maria learns to guard herself because men will come after her whether she likes it or not and she can’t be fooled by promises of sweet talking and compliments.

Laura is thirteen when she experiences this for the first time, when a boy she likes invites her to the movies only to try to make out with her during the credits.

Maria is thirteen when she experiences this for the first time, when her older cousin forces her to kiss him in the basement of her home.

Laura is fifteen and plays the oboe and field hockey, the perfect intersection of tomboy and teenage girl. 

Maria is fifteen and taking weekend visits to her grandparents’ house in the wilds of Maryland, where she learns to shoot tin cans at close range with BB guns.

Laura is sixteen and wins track races and academic decathlons and when an upperclassman tries to take advantage of her best friend at a party, she punches him in the teeth.

Maria is sixteen and wins horse races and gets the highest scores on her PSATs and when a man tries to pick her up while she’s working as a camp counselor, she kicks him in the nuts.)

  

***

 

Maria refuses to be partnered with Laura for anything they have to do together, on the grounds that it’s unfair for the only two women in the group to be paired up. She corners Laura in the bathroom during their lunch, warning her that she’s going to go to Pierce.

“And you think he’ll do something about that?” Laura asks dubiously as she washes her hands. 

“He will if I ask him nicely.”

Laura laughs out loud because there was nothing _nice_ about Maria when she was going against authority. Nonetheless, Maria’s insistence is how she finds herself working mostly with Nick Fury, even though Fury isn’t a recruit, but a Level Three agent. Laura finds herself working with Jasper Sitwell, and she spends a lot of time biting her tongue when he tries to undermine her intelligence. She doesn’t care for Sitwell, but she likes Fury, because he’s smart and competent and praises her friend when she actually does something worth being recognized for, and he doesn’t seem to subscribe to the same fake bullshit ideals Pierce does.

Four weeks after starting at SHIELD, Maria walks into Laura’s quarters and asks her to go on a trip. Laura looks up from where she’s studying a weapons handbook and furrows her brow in puzzlement.

“Where?”

“Home,” Maria says simply.

Laura accepts without even knowing where “home” is, but she figures she could use some girl time. Maria gets permission to use a quinjet for the trip, and they leave when the sun is peeking out over the clouds, dawning on a new day.

“I grew up in Chicago,” Maria says as they fly through the air. “Went into the Marine Corps after my father and I had our falling out, right after of high school. Men telling me what to do has been a staple of my life since 1982.”

Laura smiles knowingly. “Try growing up with a father who was surrounded by power,” she adds. “ _Every_ family gathering was men telling me what I could and couldn’t do.”

Maria’s family home is old but warm; no one lives there anymore, she explains when they arrive, but she likes coming here because it reminds her that she came from someplace normal. She makes Laura pasta and together, drunk on too much wine, they lie head-to-head on the wood floor, arms clasped behind their skulls, staring up at the skylight and Midwestern expanse.

“Why do you want to change the world?” Maria asks. “What makes you care so much?”

“You have to care about something,” Laura says, her eyes tracing the star-lit sky. “You have to have heart, or find a positive thread. Otherwise, why are you here?”

Maria rolls her eyes. “You scare me,” she informs Laura. “Sometimes, you really scare me.”

“ _You_ scare _me_ ,” Laura trades. “I think you probably scare Fury, too.”

Laura is hesitant to call Maria a friend. SHIELD agents didn’t have friends, and it was considered a liability to even admit you were close to anyone outside of asking for a few reports on the sly. But she realizes there’s nothing else she can call someone who knows all your dirty secrets and who can participate in conversations without words.

Laura doesn’t want to call Maria a friend, so she calls her a partner, even though their specific interests in active duty are so far apart they know they’ll never actually work together. It doesn’t matter, though. Maria knows what Laura knows: in this job, you didn’t last long if you didn’t have at least one person you could lean on. And if you didn’t learn that by the end of your first week, you usually never did, until it was too late.

 

***

 

Three years after Maria and Laura meet at SHIELD, Clint Barton joins the ranks.

Clint Barton is messy, sloppy, and he breaks all the rules. Somehow, all that adds up to him showing the most promise in Maria’s combat class, which Laura watches from above in a viewing room, leaning forward and pressing her fingers to the window as if she can find a viable foothold in this intriguing recruit.

But what Clint was off-kilter in at work, he made up for it outside of work; he was thoroughly charming and bashful despite coffee-stained crooked teeth and unwashed hair and a beard that needed desperate upkeep. Laura swears she’s not going to fall for him, but the moment Maria catches her staring a little too closely during a briefing, she starts ribbing her.

“Never,” Laura declares over whiskey sours. “It would never work. He’d drive me crazy.”

“He’s _already_ driving you crazy,” Maria points out as she shoves a handful of bar snacks into her mouth. “And that doesn’t mean you don’t like him. You can’t lie to me, Laura.”

That’s the problem -- she can’t lie. So she lets Maria be her protocol-minded, blunt self.

“What do you see in him?”

What _did_ she see in Clint Barton, the person that gave legal and accounting more headaches than they had felt in years? “He’s smart,” she says. “Intelligent, funny, cute.” She thinks about the things she’s seen in Clint Barton -- the way he’d helped a new girl find her way to the training rooms, the way he’d emotionally opened up about his broken family in his background check. “He has heart.”

“He still breaks all the rules,” Maria decides. “That doesn’t get him a free pass to date my best friend.”

“So what does?”

Maria’s eyes crinkle at the edges. “Proficiency in his new weapons.”

Clint, as it turned out, had some experience as a small-time criminal, and thus had a pretty good grasp on how to work like a spy. He also had pretty good aim, which is why Laura decided, after watching one particular sparring session, to see what he could do with something more simple than a gun.

“Never had to handle one of these before,” Clint says when Maria hands him his new weapon. “Aren’t there supposed to be arrows or something?”

Laura isn’t watching the exchange at the time, but her earpiece is still in, and she can almost see Maria smile. She’d given Maria a new project, and like most projects, her friend wasn’t going to stop working on it until it was perfect.

Fortunately for both of them, Clint Barton was never going to be perfect.

 

***

 

Laura had a boyfriend in high school, a nerd-turned-jock that hit all the things she liked in a guy: smart, rebellious, flirty. She dated him until she went to college, when she realized she didn’t want to do chain herself to long distance.

Maria had boyfriends but they were never serious; her aunt once tried to set her up with a boy from church and she wasn’t interested but went out with him a few times to be nice.

Maria doesn’t find Clint attractive. He doesn’t fit her at all, he’s too rash and Maria is too rigid. But Laura finds him intriguing; she’s fascinated by the fact he can be so many things to so many people all the time, while not being the same person in any of those situations at all. She likes his laugh, she thinks he’s cute, but she doesn’t want to admit that she likes him. So she makes jokes and Maria laughs with her about it -- SHIELD agent Laura marrying SHIELD agent Clint; good god where would they even be able to _honeymoon_ , they would probably spend the whole time either working or shooting a gun from behind a nice flower arrangement at the Four Seasons in Hawaii.

 

***

 

Maria’s grandmother gave her a full bottle of Cabernet for her twenty-first birthday; the bottle was sent priority overseas to London where she was studying abroad. She drank it on the steps of the Louvre when she took a spontaneous side-trip to blow off some steam from school stress.

“Maria, honey, you deserve so much more than this,” her grandmother said when she found out that her granddaughter wasn’t throwing loud parties or surrounding herself with a huge social circle the way most young adults were. “Don’t close yourself off just because you’re obsessed with trying to find some form of self-care. It’s not healthy.”

Maria Hill was used to spending her birthdays alone, until she came to SHIELD. She spent her twenty-third birthday with Melinda May on a roof in Bahrain, she spent her twenty-fourth birthday with Laura on a day trip to Punta Cana. On her twenty-fifth birthday, Laura is on a mission and Maria is alone working on reports, when she’s interrupted by a soft throat clearing and the sound of feet shuffling.

“Uh, Laura told me today was your birthday,” Clint says sheepishly as he approaches her, holding out a smushed cupcake with a candle in it.

It’s the first time in Maria’s life that a man has tried to do something genuine without any malicious intentions behind it, so she accepts the cupcake with a smile.

 

***

 

Laura never thought she would get married. It wasn’t that she didn’t want it, she just didn’t think marriage was something that fit her. She remembers her mother’s words about men and how she shouldn’t trust them. But Clint look at her differently, and she hates that she’s falling for him, because she knows she’s falling for the cliche man -- the cute, fumbling, competent agent who can shoot three arrows with his eyes closed and at the same time, trip over his own pants which he’s forgotten to pull up after going to the bathroom.

When Clint proposes, Laura accepts -- but she goes to Maria right after, citing an emergency drink session. Maria meets her at a bar in downtown Brooklyn where they order shots of Jameson, and Maria gives her blessing for Laura to marry, with one condition. “You have to let me still yell at him, and we need to keep our mutual hatred of how often he breaks protocol,” she tells her friend. “You can’t go soft on him because you’re sleeping with him regularly, now. That’s totally not fair.”

Laura agrees and that’s how the tally of “Clint Barton’s Most Annoying Moments” starts. It lives first on a notepad in Laura’s purse, then on a notepad in Maria’s phone, and eventually ends up in a group text message.

 

***

 

A few months after Clint and Laura get married, Maria is stationed in Madripoor for a solo assignment. She’s supposed to rescue two senior agents who have been compromised after infiltrating the ranks of a terrorist organization known as Hydra, and when she finishes her assignment and brings them both home, they both sneer at her over the roar of the quinjet.

“How many times did you have to kiss Fury in order to get this mission?” Bradley leers with a grin.

“What’s a pretty girl like you doing running rescue missions for old guys?” Reynolds asks with an eyebrow raise.

Maria ignores both of them and continues to clean her gun, pretending that the words aren’t knives in her stomach. She goes directly to Fury and reports both of them unfit for further duty, and isn’t too surprised when Bradley accuses her of field misconduct.

 _It comes with the job_ , she types to Laura in an email, as Laura is now off on a mission of her own. _I’ll be okay. They’re just dumb men, anyway_.

Three weeks after Maria returns from Madripoor, Fury comes to her with a somber look and a folder, and asks her to sit down.

“Bradley and Reynolds were relieved of their duties today,” he says quietly, sitting down next to her. “We conducted a full investigation once they became compromised in their original assignment.”

“What happened?” Maria asks, keeping her voice calm and neutral, because she has a feeling there’s more to this story than Fury is telling her. Fury’s mouth lines itself into a vertical slit.

“We have confirmation that both Bradley and Reynolds were triple agents, pretending to be loyal to SHIELD. But it was only one place their loyalties lied, and it wasn’t with us.”

Maria wants to be surprised. But she’s not, because men have been terrible her whole life, except for her grandfather and Nick Fury and Clint Barton. So she says, “oh,” and then nods a few times to show emotion.

“What’s going to happen to them?”

Fury looks at her sideways. “They’ll be dealt with. The World Security Council -- they’ve tasked me with telling you they want you to carry out the kill order. But --”

“Okay,” Maria says, standing up. She takes her gun out of her holster. “Show me where they’re being held.”

Maria stares at Agent Bradley and remembers his words to her on the quinjet, then blinks once and puts a bullet in his head.

She decides she doesn’t need to tell Laura what she’s done.

 

***

 

After Madripoor, Maria moves through the ranks of SHIELD with surprising swiftness. A few phone calls to Alexander Pierce and the World Security Council later, she’s Nick Fury’s right hand agent thanks to the newly minted position of Assistant to the Director and a promotion that comes with more money, a bigger desk, a shiny new suit...and a few more grey hairs.

“Are you fucking _kidding_ me?”

Laura can hear Maria even though she’s on the other side of the door, but she’s been banned from entering. This was a moment between Clint and his supervisor, not Clint and his friend who had drank herself silly at their courthouse wedding reception and divulged all of Laura’s dirtiest secrets.

“Clint Barton, please tell me you are _fucking_ kidding me!”

He’s not, Laura knows, but she’s enjoying this way too much to barge in and ruin the moment.

“I didn’t break protocol!”

“Like hell you didn’t!” Maria yells, slamming her fist on the table; the sound reverberates through the walls. “You _specifically_ broke protocol! You brought a compromised foreign asset into the United States! You didn’t ask if it was allowed, and you could be charged with removing her from her country with liability! Clint, you are a goddamn disaster!”

“Come on,” Clint replies, his voice rising. “You can’t blame me, Maria. I was supposed to kill her, and I couldn’t kill her.”

“So you brought her back here. This…” Laura imagines Maria gesturing wildly, her face a set mask of anger and frustration. “This assassin girl!”

“She wanted to deflect!” Clint argues. “I wasn’t breaking protocol, I was saving a life!”

Maria storms out of her office and doesn’t come back for an hour. Laura breaks away from her work and finds her in a bar down the street, angrily sipping a diet coke with rum.

“I swear to god, he’s going to put me in an early grave every time he pulls this shit!” she rages when Laura comes in. “One day, I’m going to put him on the most boring mission ever, just to piss him off. It’ll teach him to not go behind my back on things! I don’t care if it means you don’t have sex for a month.”

Laura laughs and leans over to drink from Maria’s glass. “Next time he pisses you off, you should put him a lab or something and make him do nothing but watch other people work. It would drive him crazy not to be in combat and sit still,” Laura suggests with a smirk.

Maria had a point about Clint, but as it turned out, Clint had a point about Natasha. The rogue Russian assassin, once you got past her volatile nature, did seem to express a desire to clean up her past, and her first attempts at combat were so impressive that Laura knew even Maria couldn’t hide her skepticism.

“It doesn’t excuse him,” she says as she watches Clint spar. “He’s still a protocol breaking idiot.”

“He’ll always be that,” Laura replies, because she it’s true, and she hasn’t married him for nothing. She takes out a marker and hands it to Maria, who sighs and makes another tally on the “Clint Barton Fucked Up Again And Cost Me Another Day Of Headache Medication” chart.

 

***

 

Laura quickly realizes she doesn’t want the power Maria has. She likes that her friend has grown to be so credible, and she’s proud of her, but she doesn’t know if long-term active duty is for her.

“I want to have kids one day,” Laura admits to Maria as they thumb through a few movies that Laura’s chosen from her collection for their girls night. “I don’t know if I always want to have a gun in my hand or a cell phone in my pocket.”

“What about Clint?” Maria asks. “What does he want?”

Laura sighs. “He wants a family. We both do. But he doesn’t want to stop working. I get it, I do…” She trails off. “It doesn’t mean that both of us have to have the same lifestyle, though.”

Maria sits back on Laura’s couch and purses her lips. “So what would you do instead?”

Laura frowns. “I don’t know,” she admits. “Maybe move somewhere. Work remotely as a consultant or something, for SHIELD or somewhere else.”

“Good luck finding a house that you can afford,” Maria says. “Laura, I know you, and I know that you’d never make a choice just because you want to give a man the opportunity to be the breadwinner...but you told me you wanted to change the world.”

“I know,” Laura says, thinking of how naive she must have sounded when she thought the easiest thing she had to deal with was men who bragged about the powerful roles they held. “I still do. Maybe I can do that by letting Clint be the person who breaks protocol.”

“Maybe,” Maria agrees. “Think, Laura. What makes you happy?”

Laura realizes she doesn’t know, so she takes a weekend off and goes home to rural Iowa, where her dad has retired to. She leaves Clint at SHIELD to work with Natasha, and Maria at SHIELD to deal with upcoming missions.

“You always wanted to be the girl who changed everyone’s mind about the most impossible things,” Laura’s mother says with a sad smile as she brings Laura hot chocolate. They sit together on the wide porch, overlooking a lawn that once held all the dreams of a five-year-old who fantasized life beyond the cornfields.

“That hasn’t changed,” Laura says. “I just want to do it in a different way. Maria -- Agent Hill, my friend -- she’s so good at being authoritative. But I don’t think it would make me happy to sit in a chair and give direction all day like she does.”

“Would it make you happy to make coffee every day?” Laura’s mother asks. Laura inclines her head and looks out over the lawn, realizing how settled she feels.

“Yes.”

“And do laundry?”

“Yes,” Laura admits.

“And have a work space in the basement while your kids run around and bother you?”

“I didn’t bother you _that_ much,” Laura grouses. She’s not sure going home has helped anything, but by the time she returns to New York, leaving the calm, barren landscape of her homestead behind, she realizes she has the answer.

“I think I want to move,” she tells Clint first, then Maria. “Maybe go back to the Midwest somewhere, near where I grew up.”

“If you go to the Midwest, you can use my Chicago home as a summer house,” Maria says while she looks over reports. Laura sits on the floor of her office, legs stretched out in front of her; Maria doesn’t say anything else and Laura knows the dry humor is Maria’s way of deflecting until she could focus on something that wasn’t work.

She doesn't want to leave Maria in New York, but Maria would be fine. Laura knows that. Laura’s always known that. She’d never worried about Maria _not_ surviving if she had to fend for herself.

 

***

 

Laura moves right before Maria is promoted a second time.

“Deputy Director,” Laura says proudly as she reads the email over Maria’s shoulder. “You sure you want to keep working for Fury? He does only have one eye.”

“Ha,” Maria mutters, turning around to smile at Laura. “I think he’s trying to prime me for this job, actually. You know he can’t stay here forever.”

“I’m surprised he’s priming _you_ when we all know Pierce has been gunning to get back in control of SHIELD again,” Laura says. “You know what red tape of an issue that’s going to be if it comes to a head?”

“Pierce.” Maria makes a face. “He’s an asshole. One day, I’ll kick him in the nuts, or shoot him, or just force him to jump out a window.”

Laura laughs, because she wouldn’t mind that image coming to life herself. “You would. I’m going to miss you.”

“Well, don’t make it seem like I’ll never see you or talk to you again,” Maria says brusquely, but this time, she looks up and smiles. “You _are_ married to Clint Barton. I figure you’ll be hearing from me at least once a day.”

 

***

 

Laura fights with Clint the day after she signs a lease on a rented house in Biloxi, Mississippi.

Maria isn’t used to seeing her friend lose battles so easily, and she’s even less used to seeing Laura cry, so she’s surprised when she finds her hiding out in the supply closet in the middle of the day. Maria locks the door and pulls her friend into a tight hug, not caring that Laura is getting water all over her new jacket.

“This is not divorce material,” Maria assures her, thinking of her own family and every other SHIELD family she knows. “He’s just upset. He’s working with Natasha a lot right now and he feels like he’s being uprooted at the worst time. He’ll come around.”

The truth is, she sympathizes with Laura, who just wants a simple life with someone who craved adventure and unrest. It’s not like Laura had never wanted those things -- she had come to SHIELD for a reason, just like her. But while Maria had found her place with overthrowing authority and leading the pack, Laura hadn’t quite found the same thing.

It would be good for her, Maria thinks, to do remote work the way Fury had suggested when she brought up moving to another state. SHIELD had field offices everywhere, and Clint was certainly not far from ever being in contact with her and everyone else in New York.

Maria has been betrayed, shot, kicked, and tortured, and every time something had happened to her, it had hurt. It also hurt knowing she might never be able to love someone the way Laura did, but she also didn’t envy this kind of hurt at all.

Maria holds her friend until she stops crying, and makes sure Laura has wiped her face, straightened her clothes, and dried her eyes before allowing her to leave the supply closet.

 

***

 

“Men will hurt you,” Maria tells her all-female self-defense group when she meets with them in an East Village underground studio. She’s standing tall with her hair in a bun, no make-up and sweatpants and a racerback running top. “Men will try to take advantage of you. It’s your job to rise above, and sometimes, that doesn’t always mean by punching back.”

“I thought this was a self-defense group,” a young girl in the back of the room calls out. Maria nods curtly.

“It is, Ms. Walker. But self-defense means more than just fighting with your hands. You need to be able to outsmart your opponents, or the people who want to take you down. You need to know how to come at your potential issues from all angles -- even the ones that are nonverbal or nonphysical. Now.” She pauses for dramatic effect. “Who’s ready to show me how to respond to a man who tells you that you shouldn’t be able to do your job?”

 

***

 

Laura moves to the Midwest and Clint comes with her, intending to commute back and forth when needed. Maria tries dating, but doesn’t get very far. Her work schedule doesn’t allow her much flexibility when it comes to planning, and SHIELD doesn’t have many eligible bachelors. Clint’s one suggestion -- Phil Coulson -- gets a laugh and an eye roll in response.

“Coulson? Have you seen the guy? He’s practically married to Agent May. Plus, he’s way too white for me.”

“Too white -- what the hell is that even supposed to _mean_?” Clint demands, while Natasha chokes on her own laughter in the back of the break room and almost spills her coffee.

“Agent Barton.” Maria raises her voice. “Start doing your job and stop trying to set me up with people I work with. Chances are, I’ve already seen them naked for some reason or another, and I don’t need to see any more of them.”

(“Why don’t you date?” Maria’s grandmother asks when she visits her in the nursing home. “You would do so well with a man. What about that nice Captain America?”

“Grams, like I would ever have a chance with Captain America,” Maria says with a sigh, trying not to think about how strange double dates would be if her and her best friend both ended up dating Avengers.)

 

***

 

By the time aliens invade New York, some of the annoyances Clint has racked up include:

Broke protocol to bring a rogue assassin agent into U.S. territory

Brought egg salad into a briefing even though everyone advised him against it because of the smell

Saved a girl in Beijing from committing suicide when he was supposed to stay behind the scenes and quietly gather intel

Went off grid when he found a lead that he didn’t bother telling anyone about until after he returned from going dark

“Has Clint done anything stupid?” Maria would ask when she called -- she had to keep the tally going, after all.

“Not that I know of. Why? You have something new for me?” Laura would answer, their usual method of greeting which eventually would devolve into updates on Laura’s children, married life, and what methods of torture Maria had decided to inflict upon her newest, greenest agents.

(The one time Laura asked Maria if he did anything stupid, when Clint had been stationed in New Mexico doing research for PROJECT P.E.G.A.S.U.S., Maria’s breath had caught in her throat -- Laura had heard the pattern of her breathing change and even before her brain comprehended what that meant, she instantly knew something was very wrong.)

“Agent May wiped the floor with this one today!” and Laura would imagine her face lighting up as she remembered all the sparring moves and fights and tactics she had been privy to in the past ten hours. It suited her: directing, being in charge, fighting with her brain and her hands. It suited her the same way this life suited Laura: baking, writing bills, ushering small children into clothing and cars and schools, and occasionally, holding Clint when he cried, his job being too much for him to handle.

 

***

 

Alexander Pierce retires, or so he says, opting to take a more corporate position in Washington D.C. Fury takes his place as SHIELD Director, overseeing all recruits and agents and missions. Maria stays in New York while they go back and forth, but occasionally, she heeds calls to come to Washington for emergencies or meetings.

She’s there right before Fury gets shot, and subsequently killed. She’s done her due diligence in this case, she’s read the protocol, she knows -- has always known -- what will happen in this case. She puts on her neutral face as he flatlines.

Maria keeps his death from everyone, from Cap, from Romanoff. She sees the emotional betrayal written all over Natasha’s face when the strongest agent she knows finds out Fury lied, and thinks about how she never told Laura she shot a teammate (however corrupt he was), masking the back of his cell wall with his brains.

 

***

 

When Laura gets pregnant, she calls Maria and shares the news excitedly. For Cooper’s birth, Maria sends her a large package containing baby clothes, extra diapers, a card, and a gift certificate to their favorite New York restaurant -- _for when you come back and need an extra pick-me-up_ , she writes inside the card, making Laura smile.

For Lila’s birth, Maria and Fury send baskets full of fruit and chocolate, and Natasha sends a large box of stuffed animals that range in size from a panda the size of Cooper to a frog the size of a tadpole.

Laura tells Maria about Nathaniel’s conception while she’s trying to deal with global catastrophes in Sokovia. Fury has disappeared, gone underground after Hydra, and is working under layers of covers. In the wake of no more SHIELD, Maria has taken over most of his work, if not all of it.

She still sends a card, though, and a small pair of baby shoes along with a shirt that says “daddy’s little troublemaker.” Considering they named their son after Natasha and Clint was who he was, Laura thinks that it’s a pretty fitting gift, and texts her, _you may be the most powerful woman in government, but you haven’t lost your touch_.

 

***

 

Clint goes off to help Wanda, and he fights with Steve, and he says he’ll be home.

Clint goes off to help Wanda, and he fights with Steve, and he says he’ll be home, but he doesn’t come home.

She expects Maria to tell her what’s going on -- screw the fact that there’s no SHIELD anymore, Natasha’s not talking to her and Fury’s not talking to her and _someone_ has to be able to tell her what’s going on. But there’s no communication after Clint’s taken, and nothing from anyone except a garbled message from Cap who tells her that he’s going to break them out, transmitted in random code that Laura barely recognizes.

It’s the worst pain Laura’s felt in her entire life, the feeling of helplessness as her children ask for their father. When she’s alone, she sits by herself in a zombie-like state, not even knowing if he’s alive or not.

When a bearded Cap delivers an equally bearded Clint to her door, Laura cries and hugs him and vows to never let go. Despite the fact that Clint is home and, for the most part, safe, she finds that she’s still mad about Maria’s absence.

“Have you even talked to her?” Clint asks. “Or are you just playing this passive aggressive game of assuming she won’t talk to you if you don’t talk to her?”

“She didn’t even come help you after Sokovia, Clint,” Laura says as she feeds Nathaniel, her temper running short. “She disappeared! She hasn’t worked in months. If she’s underground, she could at least _tell_ me. It’s not like I don’t know the procedures.”

“Maybe she found a girlfriend,” Clint says, stuffing a muffin in his mouth. Laura glares at him.

“Or...a boyfriend.”

Laura doesn’t chastise him for his comments or for speaking with his mouth full, but that’s only because he’s just come back and she feels like she needs to pick and choose her battles.

One day, a few weeks after Clint has been rescued from Ross’ underwater hell, Laura is cleaning the house when the doorbell rings. She’s expecting a few packages for Cooper, so she doesn’t bother to think before she opens the door.

“Hi,” says Maria quietly. She looks apologetic, but warm and familiar. “It’s been a long time.”

“It has,” Laura agrees, because she’s not quite sure what to say. “How are you holding up?”

“Okay,” Maria says. “I -- I heard about everything. I wish I could have helped. I had to go underground for awhile.”

“I know,” Laura says simply. She looks at Maria and remembers the girl she met on that first day of training so many years ago -- bright-eyed and sharp, more black hair than grey, all poise and protocol.

Laura looks at Maria and wonders if her friend sees what she feels is reflected in her own eyes -- someone who is tired and worn, exhausted from holding the weight of the world on her shoulders but never able to back down from defending it.

Maria swallows. “Clint -- is he here?”

“He’s here,” Laura says, nodding towards the living room and opening the door wider. “Do you want to come in? I thought you might want some wine.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @isjustprogress for more fic and feelings.


End file.
